Sandia's Biomass Program

DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) releases the short documentary film Bioenergy: America’s Energy Future, which highlights stories of individuals and companies who are passionate about achieving the promise of biofuels and addressing the challenges of developing a thriving bioeconomy. Read More

PV Performance Modeling Collaborative

Sandia National Laboratories is facilitating a collaborative group of photovoltaic (PV) professionals interested in improving the accuracy and technical rigor of PV performance models and analyses. Read More

Regional Test Center Data

Sec. Sally Jewell Visits Sandia

US Department of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell along with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), Senator Martin Heinrich, and Ben Ray Lujan toured the National Solar Thermal Test Facility (NSTTF) while approving the SunZia Southwest Transmission Project. The group also received briefings about CSP falling particle receivers, water research projects, and the Tribal Energy Program.

National Climate Assessment

Sandia researcher Dr. Vincent Tidwell of the Earth Systems Analysis group contributes to the National Climate Assessment Read the Assessment

H2FIRST

Sandia National Laboratories and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are leading the Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure Research and Station Technology (H2FIRST) project in collaboration with H2USA to address the challenges faced in developing hydrogen infrastructure.

The Renewable Systems program works to reduce the risks of transformative energy solutions that will enhance the nation’s security and economic prosperity. The Climate/Environment program works to understand and prepare the nation for the national security implications of climate change. The Energy Infrastructure program develops and applies technologies/analytical approaches to secure the nation’s critical infrastructure against natural or malicious disruption. The Energy Research program is the capability base that supports EC and champions science at Sandia.

The Renewable Systems program area works to reduce the risks of transformative energy solutions that will enhance the nation’s security and economic prosperity. Energy security research at Sandia seeks to address key challenges facing our nation and the world. We work with the energy industry to improve current hardware and develop the next generation of technologies to extract or produce energy.

The Energy and Climate (EC) Program Management Unit (PMU) spearheads research into energy alternatives that will help the nation reduce its dependence on oil and coal and to combat the effects of climate change. Sandia’s long history with geothermal, solar, and wind energy research has seen a vast increase in effort and intensity over the past 15 years and has also been supplemented in recent years with efforts in biologically based fuels: biomass from nonfood plant sources and algae—both of which can be grown on land unsuitable for farming.

The Climate/Environment program works to understand and prepare the nation for the national security implications of climate change. National security is Sandia National Laboratories’ foundational mission. Our nation’s security can only be achieved in a stable international environment. Sandia maintains close working relationships within the many agencies of the intelligence community and the DoD. There is a growing recognition of the importance of the impact of climate change on emergent security dynamics and intervention capabilities as documented in a series of reports. The UK Ministry of Defense previously devoted more than one-third of its analysis on threats due to climate change. The climate instability we now anticipate will produce conditions that increase border tensions, reduce the abilities of allies to respond, and provide an environment ripe for breeding terrorism and extremism. Most importantly, the DoD report, “Impacts of Climate Change,” notes the critical need to substantiate climate concerns by developing analytical tools to ensure self consistency, realism, validation, and a concrete foundation for strategic/tactical and operational execution.

The Energy Infrastructure program develops and applies technologies and analytical approaches to secure the nation’s critical infrastructure against natural or malicious disruption.Our nation’s energy infrastructure faces two foundational challenges as we seek our vision towards an energy independent and secure future. First, elements of the infrastructure, such as the electricity transmission and distribution network, have not significantly changed since their initial creation over a century ago. It is clear that new approaches are required for the grid to accommodate the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. Second, the reliability and resilience of our grid is central to our national security. For example, robust and secure power is essential to key infrastructure such as military installations. Economically, electricity outages presently cost our economy $150 billion annually.

The DOE Office of Science (SC) is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the U.S., providing more than 40 percent of total funding in this area. Sandia has active research programs funded by the SC Offices of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Biological & Environmental Research (BER), and Fusion Energy Sciences (FES). This work is foundational to many mission areas at Sandia, from energy, to nuclear weapons, to national security generally. The Office of Science is renowned for its ability to build and operate user facilities to enable fundamental research that are open to researchers from around the world on the basis of peer reviewed proposals.

SolarReserve Is Testing Prototype Heliostats at NSTTFSolarReserve is testing engineering units at the National Solar Thermal Test Facility (NSTTF) operated by Sandia. The company says it decided to test its prototype heliostats at NSTTF because of Sandia’s, “knowledge and reputation in the solar industry, as well as the breadth of resources available for improving and testing new designs.” SolarReserve is focused [...]

Linde, Sandia Partnership Looks to Expand Hydrogen Fueling NetworkSandia and industrial gas giant Linde LLC have signed an umbrella cooperative R&D agreement (CRADA) that is expected to accelerate the development of low-carbon energy and industrial technologies, beginning with hydrogen and fuel cells. On December 10, 2014, Linde opened the first-ever, fully certified commercial hydrogen fueling station near Sacramento with support from the California [...]

The Quest for Efficiency in Thermoelectric NanowiresSandia researchers say better materials and manufacturing techniques for nanowires could allow car makers to harvest power from the heat wasted by exhaust systems or lead to more efficient devices to cool computer chips. The work, “Using galvanostatic electroforming of Bi1-xSbx nanowires to control composition, crystallinity, and orientation,” published in the Materials Research Society’s Journal [...]

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Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.